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Two-thirds of the world's major deltas, home to nearly half a billion people, are caught between sinking land and rising seas, according to a new study.

The new findings, based on satellite images, show that 85% of the 33 largest delta regions experienced severe flooding over the past decade, affecting 260,000 square kilometres.

Appearing in the journal Nature Geoscience, the study suggests delta land vulnerable to serious flooding could expand by 50% this century if ocean levels increase as expected under moderate climate change scenarios.

Worst hit will be Asia, but heavily populated and farmed deltas on every continent except Australia and Antarctica are in peril, it says.

On a five-tier scale, three of the eleven deltas in the highest-risk category are in China: the Yellow River delta in the north, the Yangtze River delta near Shanghai, and the Pearl River Delta next to Guangzhou.

The Nile in Egypt, the Chao Phraya in Thailand and the Rhone River delta in France are also in the top tier of danger.

Just below these in vulnerability are seven other highly-populated deltas, including the Ganges in Bangladesh, the Irrawaddy in Burma, the Mekong in Vietnam and the Mississippi in the United States.

Mining and dams

The researchers believe a range of human activity, especially over the last half-century, has caused many delta regions to subside.

But upstream damming and river diversions have held back the layers that would normally build up.

Intensive subsurface mining has also contributed mightily to the problem, notes the study, led by Professor James Syvitski of the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research at the University of Colorado.

The Chao Phraya delta, for example, has sunk 50 to 150 millimetres per year as a result of groundwater withdrawal, while a 3.7 metre subsidence of the Po Delta in Italy during the 20th century was due to methane mining.

Indeed, oil and gas mining contribute to so-called "accelerated compaction" in many of the most vulnerable deltas, according to the study, the first to analyse a decade's worth of global daily satellite images.